Sack Cloth And Chicken Soup
by BiteMeTechie
Summary: Because someone out there needs to be feeding Jonathan Crane...*Revised*
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer**: Do I own Scarecrow? Yes as a matter of fact...I have an eight inch tall action figure of him sitting _right_ here on my monitor and he is one scary mo fo. Red glowy eyed variant...creepy lookin'.

A/N: Written in about thirty minutes while listening to O-zone on a constant loop, eating pixie sticks and downing soda pop...so it's probably not all that good. This was just one of those things that spent most of the day pestering me and then refused to be ignored when I sat down to write tonight.

I _hate_ that.

Anyways...I blame this story on Twinings (whom you should all go fawn over and worship), who inspired my love of Scarecrow and the resulting obsession that followed. Personally, I like her version of Crane better than most of those that have been presented in the comics...if for no other reason than her characters can get away with calling him 'Squishykins', 'Squish face' and several other things that I'm certain he would be quite put out about.

_(Originally posted from December 2006 to May 2008. Revised: November, 2008)_

-  
It was accidental, but then again, such things often are. After all, no one ever goes _looking_ to become obsessed; no one seeks out a thing to which the devote their every waking thought. Instead, obsession is one of those things that creeps up on you and will not be dismissed, grabbing hold of your existence and hanging on, refusing to be shaken off.

Such as it was for Dora Theodore, a librarian at the north side Gotham public library, who was currently staring off into space thinking about the man in question.

She hadn't _meant_ to become obsessed with the Scarecrow, it had just...happened.

It began innocently enough, innocuously, really, if she stopped to think about the facts involved. She had been out walking late one evening, on her way home from work when she stumbled into the midst of a full on battle between the Batman and his villain of the evening. They were fighting right in the alleyway that lead to the entrance to her tiny apartment, so they were indeed hard to miss.

Dora's first instinct was to run, as it should have been, but that was quickly thrust aside by another emotion as Batman slammed the Scarecrow face first into the pavement with a sickening crack.

Too stunned by the display of brutality to move, she stood transfixed while the lanky man was yanked up off the ground by the menacing vigilante. Dora had never witnessed a fight before; she abhorred violence, even going so far as to avoid watching it on television, so to be presented it first hand was something that left her in shock.

The Scarecrow clenched one hand into a fist and swung it at Batman's face _hard_. While his aim was true, the hero didn't even flinch at the blow. The Scarecrow then lunged at Batman, fingers curled into claws as he reached for the masked vigilante. Batman struck mercilessly, knocking his foe away as though he were a fly to be swatted aside.

Dora's fascination was in competition with her horror as she watched the rail thin man go at the giant again. He was so...so _little_ in comparison to Batman. Granted, he was tall, but he certainly didn't look like there was much to him under that costume. Surely one blow from Batman's monstrous fist could crush him!

David and Goliath. _That _is what she was watching: David and Goliath. An epic battle between not only good versus evil, but big versus small as well. Batman barely had a scratch on him, but the Scarecrow was looking less and less like he was up to continuing the fight. Blood dribbled from the corner of one of the eye holes in his sack cloth mask, his shirt was torn at the shoulder and his chest was heaving. He gathered himself up and made one last impressive run at the Bat, only to be knocked across the alley and landed at Dora's feet.

Not surprisingly, she let out a startled squeak and started to back away. One of her heels sank into an uneven patch of pavement and she fell backwards, landing in a graceless lump across from the Scarecrow. She began to scoot away from him, the instinct for self preservation finally surging up inside her as it should have done many long moments before.

But something made her hesitate, if only for an instant.

It was the eyes; those blue, blue eyes that made her freeze.

Blood was leaking from one of them, trickling down the brown sack cloth and something close to compassion tried to make itself known inside Dora.

A lungful of fear toxin was the reward for her moment of pity and those azure eyes seared their way into her memory as the world started closing in around her, stifling her screams and stealing her breath.

Claustrophobia. Oh, how she _loathed_ it.

Scarecrow scrambled up off the ground as his prey curled up into a whimpering ball and made a mad dash in the opposite direction, banking on the fact that Batman would care more about the fallen woman than he would about the escaping criminal.

True to form, Batman played the hero and snapped up the innocent bystander without a second's thought. She trembled and wept and was all around uncooperative until he gave her the antidote, after which dropped her at a hospital and then he disappeared into the night to seek his quarry.

And that had been Dora's first encounter with the man named Crane.

Her _second_ encounter took place three years later in the bleakest part of December and was far less intrusive than the first.

Once more, she was on her way home, this time with a paper grocery sack full of various necessities--milk, butter, eggs and the like--cursing the fact that she still hadn't been able to scrape up enough money for a decent car that wouldn't break down at the drop of a hat.

In retrospect, it had been a very foolish thing to be wandering the icy walks in high heels with a bag of heavy groceries, but with her car in the shop and her fridge bare, she had no choice. So she teetered along, trying desperately not to slip and land on her back.

She succeeded right up until a small boy came barreling down the walk and crashed into her, flinging her unceremoniously to the ground. Her grocery bag came in contact with the cement and she could _hear_ the dozen eggs inside break.

That was a buck fifty she wasn't going to get back.

With a grumble and a groan, Dora got up and brushed the snow from her knees, wishing she had worn pants today rather than that blasted 'sensible' tweed skirt. She stood and swept up the paper bag, about to start off again when something caught her eye.

Or _someone,_ rather.

Across the street, sitting on a park bench, was the lanky frame of Jonathan Crane.

_Scarecrow._

He looked different, of course, without his costume, and there was a long red and green scarf covering the bottom half of his face, but Dora knew it was him.

It was his eyes that she saw first. That same deep-yet-clear color that had been a part of her nightmares for the first six months after that night in the alley was not one she was likely to forget.

Dora froze in her tracks and just _stared_ at him, half bent over, grocery sack dangling from one hand.

First, her mouth went dry with terror, remembering what had happened three years prior, followed by a sudden jerk in her knees as the part of her brain concerned with things like safety reminded her that she was currently in the position to become the unwitting prey of this particular predator _again_.

However, as terror is wont to do, it left her paralyzed and her higher brain functions went on vacation.

All she could do was stand and stare.

He didn't seem to see her, which was a God given _miracle,_ considering the fact she was the strangest looking thing in the immediate vicinity, stooped over with a paper bag hanging from one hand that was dripping eggy goo everywhere.

A pigeon landed near him (what a pigeon was doing on the ground in Gotham during this kind of weather certainly boggled the mind) and for a moment, Dora feared for the small creature's life.

That fear multiplied ten fold when she saw Crane glance around himself, checking to see if he was being watched before he reached inside his pocket.

Dora silently urged the animal to fly away, knowing that whatever he had in store for it couldn't have been good. He was a villain, after all…wasn't that what villains _did_? They hurt small, defenseless things, careless when it came to the repercussions so long as it furthered their goals and--

_Plop_.

The remnants of a half eaten sandwich hit the pavement with a soggy flop in front of the pigeon.

Dora blinked. Now, _that_ simply didn't make any sense.

Maybe it was drugged? That seemed like a possibility…yes…the bird would inadvertently become one of Crane's test subjects. That _had_ to be it.

The fat little thing waddled to the sandwich and pecked at it, its head making several jabbing movements as it did so.

Nothing happened. Not a thing. No conniption fit, no seizure, no sudden, violent death…_nothing_.

The pigeon ate its fill and then flapped away, seemingly none the worse for wear.

_Why_? This was the _Scarecrow_ for crying out loud…he delighted in striking fear in any living creature that crossed his path, Dora herself had been a prime example…why hadn't he done something to the bird as well?

She hated it when she put two and two together and it didn't equal four. Something was cosmically _wrong_ for all the facts she had about the man before her to be contradicted so completely with a single act of compassion.

Surely there must've been _some_ explanation for the change in behavior…

And that was how the obsession began.

After she gathered her wits and set off for home at as close to a sprint as she could manage in those thrice damned heels, she started to wonder about the man she had seen on the park bench.

He was so different from the image of the Scarecrow. So much more…frail.

With the mask on, he seemed a spectral being; a great and terrible figure; a force to be reckoned with.

Without it, he was but a man: gaunt, weak and harmless, almost like an underfed dog. Of course, the same fire lay behind his eyes, but the rest of him was ill equipped to strike fear into her heart without the aid of his mask and toxin.

She _tried_ to push it out of her mind--tried to ignore the nagging need to know _why_--but strive as she might, she couldn't make it go away. Curiosity burrowed its way under her skin and settled there, intent on staying for the duration.

It itched just beneath the surface of her consciousness, demanding to be addressed and _refusing_ to be ignored, to the point that she could hardly concentrate on her work.

It took three weeks of wrestling violently with her conscience to finally give into the temptation to try and find out more.

It took another week and a half to convince herself that staking out the park in hopes of seeing him wasn't crazy.

Even then, she wasn't completely convinced.

On her day off, she took a thermos of hot coffee and a blanket, and then found a spot where she could watch the park bench he had made an appearance at without being observed by its occupant.

Within the first hour, she had polished off half of her coffee and was grateful for the warmth. By hour two, the coffee was gone and she prayed the blanket would suffice. Hour three saw children playing in the snow nearby but the bench remained completely empty.

By the time hour six rolled around, Dora was scolding herself for her stupidity.

Why would a master criminal return to the same place twice? Surely if _she_ would think of that as being part of pattern behavior, the Bat would as well.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Now, she had managed to get stiff muscles and most likely a case of frostbite, and for what? He didn't show.

Dora started folding up her blanket and gathered up her thermos, cursing her idiocy the entire time.

What a complete and utter waste of her valuable--

Well…maybe not a _complete_ waste after all.

_He_ had decided to make an appearance _just_ as she was preparing to leave.

How fitting.

Dora dropped back down where she had been sitting before and glanced at her watch, taking note of the time. Four in the afternoon.

She frowned thoughtfully. That was about the same time she had been walking home from work when she saw him last.

So, he _did_ have a pattern after all.

Well…maybe not a completely _established_ one, it was only two instances and that _hardly_ counted as a pattern, but it was a start.

In the days and weeks that followed, she made a habit of popping by the park around four just to see if he was there.

Every alternate Thursday and every third Saturday, he was.

Dora started making a point of changing her schedule around in order to be at the park on those particular days. It just became a habit.

After all, she still hadn't figured out _why_ he was there on those _particular_ days, and she was _dying_ to find out.

Maybe _dying_ was the wrong term to use. She certainly was curious, though.

Besides…it gave her an excuse to watch him. Not that she…_liked_ watching him, or anything, although he _was_ fascinating--once she got over her initial fear of him, that is, which took a much shorter time than she would have thought.

Dora supposed it had something to do with how unthreatening he seemed. He was _not_ an imposing human being without his Scarecrow costume and was quite a bit on the 'bookish' end of the scale (which suited Dora the librarian _just_ fine.). He wore glasses, which was the very first thing she noticed about him after his eyes. They were thin, golden wire rimmed things, that rather reminded her of her grandfather's spectacles.

The hair at his temples was graying slightly, blending into the sandy brown, adding to the impression that he was a fragile creature and not the master criminal of import that Scarecrow was.

Dora began to think of the two of them as separate entities. They were so different, it seemed that they couldn't _possibly_ be the same man. The Jonathan Crane before her looked so delicate that she found herself wishing that she could just go up to him and offer him a bowl of soup.

But that was insane. That was _beyond_ insane. To feel the urge to knit a super villain a sweater was surely a sign that Dora's sanity was slipping away from her. Harley Quinn she most definitely was _not_. She had no desire to follow the man in his life of crime, she just wanted to…

She wanted to…

To what?

What did she want to do?

She didn't even know. The feelings were there (whatever they were) but they hadn't been able to manifest themselves as coherent thoughts yet.

She knew she wanted to take care of him, but didn't know _why_, or _how_, for that matter. One does not make a habit of wandering up to criminals and offering to love them and pet them and call them George. That simply isn't done, and for good reason. It was rumored that last woman who tried to unleash that sort of behavior on the Riddler had been scattered around Gotham in so many pieces they were _still_ looking for bits of her four years _later_.

So, it was obvious to Dora that if she wanted to exorcise these feelings of 'must-care-for-helpless-puppy-of-a-man', she would have to find a way to do it anonymously.

The answer came in the form of a blow to the head.

Dora had spent a Sunday in early February cleaning out one of her kitchen cabinets when a can of chicken broth and her thermos leapt at her.

When she regained consciousness to find the can and thermos on the floor next to her, she took it as a sign.

The next Thursday was marked on her calendar, which meant that _he_ would be in the park that afternoon. She had a limited window of opportunity in which to work and made the best of it.

She spent Wednesday night making the biggest batch of homemade chicken noodle soup that the inside of her tiny kitchen had ever seen, filled the thermos near to overflowing and then waited.

The next day, at approximately three thirty, she got off work early and carefully set the thermos on the bench that she had taken to calling _his_. She could only hope that he got to it before one of the local park bums did.

He didn't disappoint.

He arrived right on time and immediately spotted the thermos. He regarded it cautiously for a long time before he finally sat down as far away from it as possible, watching it as if it might sprout legs and leap at him. It _didn't_, of course, but that didn't stop him from staring at it like it _might_.

After twenty minutes, Dora saw him edge towards it _ever_ so slightly, still looking like he suspected it might be a bomb.

_Another_ twenty minutes later, he got _really_ brave and poked it.

Once.

Twice.

Repeatedly.

Secure in the knowledge that poking it didn't cause it to blow up, he picked it up with his thumb and forefinger and studied it curiously.

Dora could almost _see_ the wheels in his head turning and it delighted her. _Why_ it delighted her, no one could tell you, but it did.

Another ten minutes of cautious scrutiny, and he finally ventured to open the screw top lid.

To see his brow furrow with momentary confusion made Dora grin against her will.

He was so cute when he was being puzzled.

Crane stared at the soup for a solid minute before he did something that caused Dora's spirits to sink:

He screwed the top back on without even giving the stuff so much as a whiff. Instead, he tucked the thermos inside his ill fitting jacket and left the park, far earlier than he usually did.

_Crap_.

She had messed up his routine. He'd probably take this as some sort of a sign that someone was onto him or trying to poison him and never come back again.

She should have just knit him that damn sweater.

(Too bad she didn't know how to knit…)

The next Saturday that he was due to come, she returned to the park, though she held little hope that he would be there.

He wasn't, but the thermos was; and it was _empty_.

A yellow post-it note was tacked to the top as well, on which was written in a very spiky, tightly packed scrawl:

_Less oregano next time_.


	2. Chapter 2

Jonathan Crane was not a man given to the practice of solving puzzles. It wasn't in his nature to be interested in such things; his primary concern was _fear_, not curiosity and as such, puzzles were never in his realm of interest.

Yet here he sat, on this part bench, presented with a most perplexing one.

One would _think_ that a red and white thermos would hold no interest for a man like Crane, but it _did_. He'd been coming to this spot for the past several weeks to meet with his chemical suppliers and nothing like this had happened _before_...

It was more suspicion than curiosity that drove him to stare at the offending object in question as though it might explode. After all, men in his chosen profession had to be ever vigilant in everything they did. His line of work was one where making enemies was miraculously easy and the enemies one made in a place like Gotham were not the sort to be trifled with.

He eyed the unassuming container warily and pondered on the possible meaning it could have.

A thermos.

Who did he know that would use such a thing as a delivery system for his doom?

(The fact that the idea of a 'Thermos of Doom' sounded absolutely ridiculous did **not** escape his notice.)

He stared at the thermos for several minutes, going over every possibility in his head.

Joker?

No...not ostentatious enough.

Definitely not the Riddler...

The Penguin didn't have any quarrels with him...not _recently_ anyway.

Two Face was in Arkham, as were all the other 'big' criminals that might have had a bone to pick with him.

Maybe someone just forgot the thing on the park bench?

No, no...there were no coincidences. Not in Gotham. Someone had left this for him specifically.

_Why_?

He continued regarding the thermos cautiously, growing ever more suspicious by the second. If only there was some way to know who had sent it…some _clue_.

As it was, there was no indication, no proverbial Joker Grin™ that gave away any idea of who it might have been that left this for him.

That was what bothered him the most. He hadn't the foggiest notion of who was trying to kill him with such an unassuming piece of bric-a-brac.

Crane glared at the thermos

Stupid thing. Making him feel the need to investigate what it contained.

It was aggravation at the unknown that made him reach out and poke the thing, against his better judgment.

A nanosecond after the fleshy pad of his index finger came in contact with the warm metal, he withdrew his hand, having a moment of clarity that maybe, just _maybe_, poking it was what might set it off.

Bracing himself for the worst, Crane squeezed his eyes shut.

_Why_ he squeezed his eyes shut was anybody's guess. After all, the amount of protection that action would afford him in the instance of an explosion was comparable to that provided by handling plutonium with an oven mitt.

He chalked it up to reflex.

Eyelids still glued together, he focused his other senses; nose trying to detect the scent of any foreign chemical, ears trying to pick up on any tell-tale ticking noises.

Nothing.

He cracked one eye open and _stared_ directly at the thermos.

It looked just as harmless as ever. No change in its appearance, no sudden sprouting of any mechanical appendages, nothing of the sort.

One of Crane's eyebrows lifted of its own accord.

_Interesting_.

With a sudden surge of bravery, he reached over and poked it again.

And again.

And once more for good measure.

He poked the red and white cylinder seventeen times before he was satisfied it wasn't going to attack, maim, blow up, or otherwise harm him.

Alright…so it wasn't a bomb.

His brow furrowed, leaving his forehead in a mass of confused crinkles.

If it wasn't a bomb, what in God's name _was_ it?

Crane balked internally as a possibility occurred to him, absurd though it was.

What if it was filled with some kind of airborne toxin, just _waiting_ for him to open it and become infected?

Surely no one would try to gas the _Scarecrow_.

The very idea!

The notion!

The _nerve_!

Crane harrumphed a little inside. What unmitigated _gall_.

Well, if _that_ was the game afoot, his would-be assassin was out of luck.

That hideous red and green scarf he wore did more than just stave off the cold. Concealed inside it was a filter (of _his_ design, naturally) which effectively kept him safe from every known airborne toxin, gas and virus.

Feeling mildly cocky for his think ahead-ed-ness, Crane reached over and picked up the thermos between his thumb and forefinger.

It had a good weight to it, so it definitely held something substantial, the only question was _what_.

Ever so carefully, he unscrewed the lid and found--

Soup?

Wait a minute…what?

He stared at the golden liquid, pieces of noodles and small flecks of herbs floating on its surface.

Someone left the Scarecrow…soup.

His glasses were fogged up by the warmth of the offered meal, but he didn't notice.

Soup? Of all things to leave as an offering for a super villain…

_**Soup?**_

Of all the ridiculous, illogical, daft--

Poison.

Ah! Of _course_!

Someone had left him something so seemingly harmless, so obviously nontoxic, so innocently innocuous, that they hoped he wouldn't even _suspect_ it was out to do him in.

Glowering at the soup, he screwed the lid back on and tucked it inside his jacket.

He'd take it back to his lab and test it. That would give him some indication of who was trying to murder him.

Death by chicken soup. What an idiotic concept.

How would that make him look?

Jonathan Crane, the Scarecrow, the All Powerful **Master** of Fear…killed by _soup._

Not only was someone trying to _kill_ him, they were trying to make him look bad as well.

Being humiliated was one thing that Jonathan Crane could not abide and he swore to himself then that the second he found out who was trying to kill him, he would take his revenge.

With that silent oath, he set off for home, thermos tucked safely inside his threadbare coat.

He spent the entire night testing and retesting the soup, only to find that there was nothing more sinister than a bit more salt than he would have liked in it.

No arsenic, no Joker toxin, nothing lethal at all.

Curiouser and curiouser.

After an entire evening of making certain there was nothing deadly in it, he ventured to try some of it.

Which quickly led to gobbling down every last bit of it.

He hadn't had a decent meal since he escaped Arkham, and even then, what _they_ served was substandard slop that he wouldn't have inflicted on a dog.

But the soup…

He hated to admit it, but it was actually…_good_.

A little strong on the oregano though.

He wrote a small note expressing as much and taped it to the lid after he decided to return the item to the park bench on his next outing.

He told himself it wasn't curiosity that made him drop off the thermos at his customary spot half an hour before he usually showed up.

He convinced himself it wasn't interest in who his anonymous benefactor was that made him stay where he could keep the bench (and anyone who approached it) in sight.

And he absolutely _ordered_ himself that it wasn't _most_ intriguing that a young, scholarly looking woman came to collect the thermos.

Crane watched as she shook the thing and a smile slowly spread across her face at the discovery that it was empty.

She looked unbelievably _pleased_.

Which positively boggled his mind.

Why would anyone be happy that he had eaten?

Why would anyone look _that_ thrilled that they had fed _him_?

He was a _criminal_. A _bad guy_.

Crane shook his head, flinging off the confusion he felt and dismissing it.

There was no point wondering, he knew that.

It didn't take the Riddler's puzzling prowess to tell him that women were the most unsolvable, maddening conundrum of all.


	3. Chapter 3

The north branch of the Gotham City public library was the sort of massive building where even the librarians could get lost within its walls. The labyrinth of older reference books and periodicals was one that a person couldn't navigate without a map; which is precisely why Dora liked it. The library was so large that she could easily lose herself--either figuratively or literally--in the stacks if she so chose. Shelving things in the darker, dustier parts of the city's book collection was like a miniature retreat. She could think there without fear of interruption from colleagues and all but the most scholarly of patrons.

Her co-workers didn't like the part of the library that she preferred to work in (there was talk of it being haunted--how terribly silly!) so if she were feeling particularly anti-social, she could ensconce herself in the archives and stay out of public view all day long until it was time to punch the clock.

This is not to say that she did this in order to slack off. In fact, far from it. She worked _extra_ hard when she decided to isolate herself in the archive stacks because she felt it to be fair payment for the privacy the shelving there afforded her. She stayed there to think out everything that was going on in her life.

Before this past December--now almost six months behind her--she would think about things like her friends and family, the troubles she was having with boyfriends-- ex, current and possible--things like that.

Now, though, she spent most of her time thinking about…him.

It wasn't healthy, she knew that for a fact. This strange, pseudo-one-sided-relationship that she had formed with one of Gotham City's most fearsome (no pun intended) villains was _far_ from healthy and even further from being _sane_. She realized it and accepted it. She'd become obsessed with a villain; not something a girl did every day, but it was a little too late to change it now. He couldn't be _that_ bad, after all. He was a _scientist_. A scientist was a man to be admired, even though this particular scientist's methods were far from being ethically defensible.

They exchanged curt notes with the soup every other Thursday and every third Saturday--not love notes, certainly, but short, sentence long snippets of an ongoing conversation that was several months long--but that was as far as it went.

Often, during her work shelving in this abandoned part of the library, she thought out her next response to whatever he had said last, trying to come up with the wittiest reply; the sharpest; the one he would appreciate the most and bring her to a higher standing in his eyes.

It was stupid, but that's what she spent many of her work hours doing. She couldn't explain _why_, exactly, she wanted him to like her, but she _did_ want him to and much of her mental effort went to composing clever responses to his notes.

It was on one such afternoon of heavy thinking, as she was carefully replacing 'A. Anderson' between 'A. Amison' and 'A. Apon' that a slender, underfed shadow emerged from the gloom, startling her into dropping the volume she'd been preparing to place back into its proper slot on the shelf.

Jonathan Crane--not the Scarecrow--in his worn tweed jacket with the patches on the sleeves stood before her, startling sky blue eyes staring at her from behind the gold wire rimmed glasses that she'd come to like so much from afar. In a movement much faster than she thought someone of his obvious ill nourishment would be able to pull off, he pulled her to him, one hand on the back of her head, the other clamped down over her mouth. She was crushed against his chest in such a way that she didn't dare bring her hands up to fight him off.

"Miss Theodore."

Dora's voice caught in her throat and came out as a little breathless wheeze. It wasn't anywhere near the droll, intelligent reply she had _hoped_ would come out if she ever managed to be face-to-face with him again, but she figured so long as she hadn't fainted dead away, she was still pretty on the ball.

His upper lip twisted into a smirk and his eyelids dropped to half mast. "Startle you, did I?"

She stared stupidly for a moment before nodding vigorously. Probably more vigorously than was absolutely necessary because he increased the pressure on her head to stop her from nodding so hard her head popped off.

His eyes slid over her features, studying her carefully. "Startled, indeed…but not _afraid._"

Dora took a deep breath--a rather shallow deep breath, now that she was thinking about it--and shook her head from side to side as best she could.

"Why _not_?" he asked curiously, tilting his head and scrutinizing her as if she were a test subject and not a woman who had clearly fallen head over heels for him from a distance.

Dora had no answer to this question so she just looked at him, eyes wide and empty of all guile.

"You don't know?" This seemed to amuse him further, because his smirk grew and his eyes lit up in such a way that Dora's kneecaps seemed to disappear without warning. "How _fascinating_."

_Fascinating. He thinks I'm fascinating._

"I'm the master of fear, you know," he said unnecessarily, a bit of forgivable smugness in his tone. "I am not accustomed to people _not_ being afraid of me."

All Dora could manage was a couple of sympathetic blinks and a gentle nod of her head.

"I _like_ it that way," he continued, his voice dropping an octave in the process. "I suppose you think it must get very lonely, don't you?"

She blinked again and the pleased look on his face increased tenfold.

"You've convinced yourself you love me, haven't you?"

She averted her eyes on instinct, color rising in her cheeks.

He chuckled. She felt it rumble through his chest, beneath where her hands had somehow situated themselves without her consent.

_How did those get there?_

"Well, I _must_ say this has never happened to _me_ before. I'm not the lovable _type_…"

Dora dared to glance up at him as the hand over her mouth loosened just a little.

"Then again, I suppose if the Joker can manage to garner fanatical devotion, it's not so far out of the realm of possibility that I may deserve the same."

His hand was removed in an instant and cold, thin, passionate lips clamped down over hers without warning. Dora's heart hammered away in her chest and her hands fisted in the fabric of his jacket in the realization of a six month old fantasy for a few moments before the back of her neck exploded with a sharp stab of pain. Her eyes flew open with realization as he pulled back and the world started to tilt and twist in front of her eyes.

_A trick, nothing but a trick, he didn't want you to be able to scream while he injected you._

"The trouble is, my dear Miss Theodore," he said mockingly, even as her mind screamed at her and she fell to the floor at his feet, her breath coming in short, desperate pants as the drug pumping through her bloodstream making her skin crawl as though there were a thousand spiders under the uppermost layer of epidermis.

"I don't want your devotion," he sneered as she hit the floor, twitching and gasping for air. "I want your _fear_."

_Six months_, a voice in her head whispered as darkness started closing in around her, _he waited six months just to lull you into a false sense of security…he's a scientist…he wanted to __**study**__ you. Study your __**anomalous**__ behavior...you're nothing but a lab rat. Stupid, Dora, stupid, stupid, stu--_

Darkness swallowed the librarian whole.

She lay still.

The man in his worn tweed jacket stepped over her without care, as though she were nothing more than a piece of refuse at his feet.

And in Robinson Park, near a vacant park bench and a half eaten sandwich, a pigeon lay on its side, a wing outstretched toward the heavens…

_Twitching._


End file.
